by Francisco Tutella
Marilyn Fogel, who graduated in 1973 with a degree in biology, may have come to Penn State for the football games, but she left with an appreciation for the interdisciplinary research that would define her career.
Now, she and her husband, Christopher Swarth, aim to get more Penn State students engaged in interdisciplinary research through the establishment of the Marilyn L. Fogel Student Research Fund in Biogeosciences.
Biogeosciences combines the fields of geoscience and biological science to answer questions about the modern world and living ecosystems as well as the beginnings of life on Earth. The couple’s $25,000 gift will support research activities for undergraduate and graduate students affiliated with the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute in the college and will have a particular emphasis on enabling field or laboratory research focused on geology, ecology, meteorology, biogeochemistry, climate science, and geography.
“Chris and I are thrilled to have the opportunity to create an endowed fund that promotes biogeosciences in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute,” said Fogel. “We know the importance of providing opportunities for students to experience thinking outside of a traditional scientific field and open their minds to a new way of critical thinking.”
Fogel enrolled at Penn State as a biology major, but she found her calling as a biogeochemist after taking several classes that sparked an interest in the study of the origins of life, including courses in paleobotany, coal petrology, and physical geology.
Two courses in particular had a profound impact on her career trajectory. Fogel took part in Penn State’s Wallops Island Marine Science program in its inaugural year in 1972. The program, with its emphasis on fieldwork on the island’s marshes, beaches, and coastal waters, confirmed for Fogel that she wanted to do research with a fieldwork component.
She also enrolled in an organic geochemistry class taught by the late Peter H. Given, professor emeritus and first chair of the former Fuel Science Program in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. There she learned to apply her knowledge of chemistry to understand the biological, environmental, and ecological processes that shaped life on Earth.
“I was fascinated with the instruments, the methods and the papers that I encountered in that class,” said Fogel, who would apply this knowledge throughout her career studying tiny particles called stable isotopes to understand the processes that shaped modern and ancient ecosystems. “When I started in geochemistry, I wasn’t at all interested in using stable isotopes for my research, but that certainly changed when I went to graduate school.”
Fogel received her doctorate in botany and marine sciences from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 and shortly thereafter became a staff scientist at the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. She worked there for thirty-five years, becoming a leading expert in stable isotope chemistry and a pioneer in the emerging biogeosciences field. Her work has led to breakthroughs in multiple disciplines, including paleoecology and climate change, astrobiology, and modern ecosystem studies.
Swarth holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in zoology and biology and spent his career directing nature reserves, first as director of the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Maryland and then as reserve director of the Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve in Merced, California, up to his retirement in 2016.
In 2013, Fogel became a professor at the University of California, Merced, and in 2016 accepted a position at UC Riverside, where she is professor emerita in Earth and planetary sciences and still directs the Environmental Dynamics and Geo-Ecology Institute.
Fogel and Swarth have made gifts to the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute over the years and have appreciated the notes and photographs they’ve received from students whose research they have supported.
“The specifics you hear back about how your money was used makes you feel good and makes you realize that your funds were needed and used to accomplish important education and research,” said Swarth.